Don’t be a Pest in Budapesht – silverfox175

Check the pronunciation of Budapest – it ends as ‘pesht’ not ‘pest’.

On arrival at Budapest station from Prague we had to buy our onward tickets to Vienna. I’d tried to buy them over the internet, but Hungary’s rail system would not allow this to happen. We found the office for international tickets and entered, only to be greeted by a packed booking section. Every nationality you could think of seemed to be hanging around waiting for a free window. I looked around and realised that I had to take a ticket from a machine to secure a place in the queue. My number was 502 and the flashing light board was calling for 470. It was going to be a long afternoon.
My friend returned to our wives and warned them that it was going to be a long wait. We didn’t wish to go to the hotel, and then have to come back the following day, because this would have used up too much time. After about forty-five minutes my number was called and I was able to speak to a very helpful lady, even though my Hungarian was nil, and her English was intermittent. Eventually I understood that she wanted to sell me a return ticket to Vienna, when I only wanted a single. After a bit more broken chat and sign language I grasped that the return ticket was much cheaper than the single, so I was quite happy to buy the return. This lady saved us enough money to pay for our evening meal! Now that’s customer service.

In Budapest we stayed at the Hotel Victoria overlooking the Danube – what more could one ask?

  

These two pictures show the view from our bedroom window –

We had a good size room – picture window over looking the River Danube where we could see the Chain bridge and the Parliament building. The breakfasts in the small dining room were good and the hotel offered plenty of choice, and eggs to order. In the evening we were offered a happy hour system based on buy one – get one free from 5.30 to 6.30 pm, which we used before heading out for our evening meal. They also offer free wi-fi, and I never had a problem with signal strength on the seventh floor.

Like Prague we found that Budapest was easy to get round so we just walked everywhere. We did do a ‘free’ walk – donate what amount you think the walk was worth at the end. It was an interesting three hours and we ended up at the ‘castle’ at the top. The castle is more a large house where the President lives rather than a castle as in the Welsh or English castles. The guide was entertaining as well as being educational. He was well worth his money. The tour ended in the basement area of the Hilton Hotel. When they excavated for the hotel’s foundations they discovered an old church, which walls have been incorporated into the Hilton area.

 

The guide outside where the President lives and in the basement of the Hilton Hotel just before the end of the tour, you can see the old wall of the church.

  

This is not Disney Land, but the Fisherman’s Bastion. The name is taken from the guild of fishermen who defended this area in the middle ages. From this area you have a spectacular view of the city and the river. 

   

The local market in Budapest has been voted as the best market in Europe for 2013, I would argue that point, but it was still interesting to visit. We bought a few items, but overall we found this market to be expensive. It was much more expensive than Prague.

The following day we decided to visit the Hero’s Square and worked it out that it was too far to walk, so we would go by train. We bought the tickets and saw that a train was about to leave so hurried and caught it just as the doors were about to close. We checked the map on the train wall and decided that we were on the correct train. It took us a couple of station before we realised that we were on the wrong train, and we were on our way to a country area. The local station where we alighted from the train was a quiet station, where the public crossed the railway line to gain access to the train going the other way. Unacceptable in many stations so close to major cities in Australia – but when in Rome.

   

On returning to our starting point we had to buy new tickets because the tickets we purchased had already been validated and the guard would not allow us back in to the system. There wasn’t one guard at the top of the escalators, but three arm waving guards blocking our way. We’d boarded a country train instead of a metro. A simple mistake because the ticket seller had waved us to the appropriate platform, and as all the platforms were underground, we thought we had boarded the metro system. The metro system was further underground which we only realised after we’d bought our second set of tickets for the trip. Education can be expensive . . . We eventually reached our destination.